PROVEN Investments yesterday announced that it became the largest shareholder in microlender Access Financial Services Ltd through its 49 per cent acquisition for $1.2 billion, after the shares were offloaded by Mayberry Investments and other shareholders.

It will result in Proven’s chief executive officer, Chris Williams, joining the board of Access, which through its founder Marcus James, was one of seven nominees for the 2013 Observer Business Leader Award.

“Access Financial has a profound impact on the market and proven profitability. Given the acquisition of Asset Management Company Limited (AMCL), some two years earlier, the acquisition of Access will make an easy synergy,” Williams told the Jamaica Observer in a telephone interview last evening.

AMCL — a microlending firm previously owned by Scotiabank — was acquired by Proven in January 2012.

In November, Proven increased its shareholding to 20 per cent in Knutsford Express, another successful company, whose Managing Director Oliver Townsend was also nominated for the 2013 Observer Business Leader Award. In May this year, Proven Investments acquired 100 per cent of First Global Financial Services Limited from the GraceKennedy Group for some $3 billion.

Williams said the acquisitions formed part of Proven’s mandate to identify strategic investment opportunities, preferably in the financial services sector, throughout the region.

The Access deal gives Proven roughly 134.5 million of the 274.5 million total outstanding shares in the company. Prior to the deal, the top shareholders in Access Financial included founder and CEO Marcus James at 112.4 million units, plus an additional 7.6 million through connected persons, followed by Mayberry West Indies at 106.1 million, Schusui at 13.7 million, and Springhill Holding at 7.5 million.

“We bought from several people, including Mayberry,” Williams told the Observer, but when pressed he declined to give a precise number of shareholders who sold.

Mayberry, in a release yesterday, acknowledged that it sold its shareholding, while CEO of Mayberry Investments, Gary Peart, expressed pleasure in monetising the investment.

“We are now interested in finding new investments to deploy the proceeds profitably,” Peart stated.

Mayberry added that, after an initial investment of $38 million in 2006, the investment bank will earn approximately $955 million or US $8.34 million from the transaction.

Last night, Access Financial Services director Neville James said the company will respond today to yesterday’s disclosure that Mayberry had sold more than 100 million units of shares in Access.

James, the father of the founder of Access, was among four new directors of Access named last year to help reclaim his son’s control of the company after an impasse.

“He (Marcus James) will be in office tomorrow, and I am sure you will hear something from him,” the elder James said.

The Proven deal, on the surface, resolves the rift in the Mayberry and James camps at the company. Earlier this year, James filed a suit against five defendants, including directors connected with Mayberry, to restrain them from removing him as CEO. Justice Bryan Sykes agreed to his request in a 13-point ruling in July.

Access made $94-million net profit on $272 million in revenues in its September third quarter 2014, or 17 per cent higher profit than a year earlier.

Access, which is one of the largest microcredit outfits, increased its loans and advances to $1.2 billion or 25 per cent higher than a year earlier.